Queensland Literary Awards Funding
Queensland Literary Awards (QLA) has launched a crowd-funding campaign to raise prize money for the 2012 awards. QLA was established in April 2012 following Premier Campbell Newman’s decision not to proceed with what would have been the 14th annual Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Newman presented the cut as a cost-saving measure. (See AustLit’s 4 April 2012 blog.)
On 15 June, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail reported that the Copyright Agency Limited’s (CAL) Cultural Fund had offered one-off funding of $20,000 for the 2012 awards. CAL’s CEO, Jim Alexander, told the newspaper: ‘We have offered our support to the Queensland Literary Awards because we know that writers are some of the least-rewarded members of the community’. Alexander expressed the hope that the Queensland Government would restore funding in 2013. (‘$20,000 Cash Boost for Queensland Literary Awards’)
QLA has also received pledges of support from the Queensland University of Technology and from the University of Queensland Press. Now, the organisation is seeking $20,000 in public assistance through a crowd-funding campaign. The campaign will run for 50 days from 25 June to 14 August. Donations can be made via the crowd-funding platform, Pozible. (As of 26 June, the campaign was a quarter of the way to reaching its target.)
QLA received more than 600 entries across 14 categories for the 2012 awards. The organisation is particularly keen to provide a monetary prize for the Emerging Queensland Writer category and the David Unaipon Award for an Unpublished Indigenous Writer. The winners in all categories will be announced on 5 September 2012.